Lucas Di Grassi high-fives fans as he celebrates his win of the Formula E with Champaign as the race returns for a second year of electric car racing in Long Beach CA. Saturday April 2, 2016. (Thomas R. Cordova-Daily Breeze/Press-Telegram)

LONG BEACH >> The last thing Lucas DiGrassi wanted was a full-course caution. The ABT Schaeffler Audi Sport driver had a 3.9-second lead with six laps to go in the Faraday Future Long Beach ePrix on Saturday afternoon.

But that was what the Brazilian faced in the quietest motor vehicle race in America on the same streets that will be used in two weeks for the IndyCar Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. DiGrassi earned redemption from a month ago by winning a final three-lap shootout to take the victory and to take over the series points lead with five races remaining in the worldwide series.

“I didn’t like it, of course,” he said of the full-course caution. “I saw the safety car come out and I said, ‘Come on.’ But at the end it was right. There was a car with a wheel on the track. What can you do? It had to come out.

“So I had to just make a normal restart. I had to make sure because at that point it was a flat-out race. We had enough energy to go flat-out. I had to keep calm and not make mistakes.”

A month ago in Mexico City, DiGrassi was disqualified from a victory for having a car 3.9 pounds too light.

“We got all dirty with champagne for almost nothing,” he said. “It shows the result we had in Mexico was not a fluke. This is our answer for having 1.8 kilograms missing on one of the cars.”

Nelson Piquet Jr., who won last year’s inaugural battery-powered race, hit the wall on the Turn 2 exit, causing the safety car to come out with six laps to go. DiGrassi held his ground in a final three-lap shootout against Venturi Racing’s Stephane Sarrazin of France and Daniel Abt from Germany, also from Abt Schaeffler. It was the lone yellow flag in the 41-lap race in front of approximately 17,000.

“It went really really well, and there was the big difference between being free and having to pay,” series director Alejandro Agag said. “It was still a big crowd. We’re very happy with the numbers.”

Last year’s race was free for fans and approximately 20,000 attended. The track’s hairpin grandstands were full on Saturday. The only hiccup on Saturday was when the video feed for the entire complex was lost mid-race.

Sarrazin said he tried to get as close to DiGrassi on the restart.

“There were only a few laps, and my car was very fast,” Sarrazin said of his first podium finish in the series. “I pushed to be very close to Lucas, and it was not enough, so I did not take a risk.”

DiGrassi gained the series point lead when Sebastien Buemi of Renault e.Dams braked too hard in the hairpin turn and clipped the rear of Robin Frijns of Andretti Autosports on the 10th lap. It was a move the 16th-place finisher had done earlier in the race.

“You have to come in very early if you want to pass,” Buemi said. “It was my fault. I didn’t take enough of a margin there. I think I could have passed him later. My car was working so well. It’s really disappointing that we lost a lot of points.”

DiGrassi passed pole-sitter Sam Bird for the lead on the 11th lap as the cars made the right-hand turn off of the backstretch on Seaside Way. He came into the pits nine laps later with 1 percent of battery power remaining in his car. He left the pits in his second car in the lead. Bird overheated his brakes two laps later at the same place that DiGrassi had passed him, and fell to sixth.

“I used the momentum,” DiGrassi said. “Bird made a small mistake and he had to lift. I was able to overtake.”

Qualifying was also Saturday, and Antonio Felix Da Costa lost the pole when it was found in a post-qualifying inspection that the air pressure in the left rear tire on his Team Aguri car was 0.005 too low. His 57.198-second time was disallowed and he began in the back of the field.

“It is no advantage, but the rules are the rules,” he said. “There should be a small tolerance. It’s another one hard to swallow. We had a really good lap, a really good qualifying. It was an amazing pole position for us. us We just have to do a better job next time.”

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.